This column over time has had much fun with the mess The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun-Herald get themselves into as they suck up big time to their lifeline, Harvey Norman.

We’re talking about the fake front pages they resort to as readers toss away what is basically a four-page wraparound that includes two-and-a-half pages of Hardly Normal advertising and the inconsistent approach the papers’ subs then apply to how they folio these editions.

And today’s (Saturday’s) SMH is ….. take it away, Ned Ryerson…

… a doozey!

At top left is the fake front-page to today’s SMH. At right is the real front page that, admittedly, looks like the front page any long-running professional metropolitan would be proud to present to potential buyers in a stack of papers in newsagents.

It’s been done before but this edition ticks every box – every wrong box – of what happens when Hardly Normal is sucked up to in this manner. It has…

A fake front-page splash – New Jones abuse claims – that can’t even get a guernsey on the real front page. That’s been done before!

For this edition, the edition’s folios do in fact start from the fake front page. That’s right. The real page one is page three. Please try to stay with us as this is not always the case. Sometimes the layout subs ignore the wraparound – and let’s be fair, it’s normally designed to be tossed aside to clean up the wee of a puppy in training or used to line the cockie’s cage – and call the real-looking front page on what is sometimes page 3, as in today’s example, as page one.

Confused? You’re entitled to be because, and can we put this as bluntly as we can, if the paper’s subs don’t have a clue what they’re fucking doing, what chance do you have as the reader?

Proof of this? Take the three yarns on the real front page – page 3 – that are continued inside the book … the Crisis housing yarn that throws to Page 8; the Dutton pledges RC yarn (even though, if you read the story, he doesn’t but that’s not important right now) that is also continued on page 8, and the rozelle 2.0 yarn that’s continued on Page 4.

Ready for this? It might give you a headache. The sub doing the page 4 spillover said it originated on the front page. Like as if your average reader is supposed to know what the real front-page is in this absolute shemozzle of layout design. But the truth is simple: the yarn started on page 3! Whether we like it or not, the real front page is the fake front page folioed as page 1 even if it was meant to be tossed aside for that cockie’s cage.

And how about the two page 3 yarns that spilled to page 8? Over on page 8 the subs have had a two-way bet. (Yes, we’re assuming two different subs were involved. The paper might have inlky one sub!) The Dutton yarn is said to spill over from page 1 but of course it doesn’t. It spills over from page 3. The “crisis housing” story is said to spill over from the front page, but of course it doesn’t either.

We’ll pause briefly here in case you want to take a headache pill.

The MGH over time has tried to come up with solutions to this absolute mess. Both papers could tell Gerry Harvey to get fucked but that’s not going to happen. If that wonderful humanitarian and all-round good guy Gerry Harvey for some bizarre reason loves the idea of the wraparound where very expensive advertising gets cast aside with the long-suffering Peter FitzSimons column, then our paper execs should at least have the balls to make him take the inside back page as well and give Fitz a chance at being read! And to have a sports section that looks like it starts with a real main sports page!

The executives could, of course, tell Mr Harvey that he can only have a quarter of the front page and make the most of just the one real front-page. Oh, who are we kidding? When Mr Harvey says jump, Herald editorial executives shout in unison: “How high, sir!”

So if the idea of the fake and real front pages is to continue, at least get some consistency and call the real front page page one and start the folios from there. And then fucking clue up the subs (we’re still assuming there are more than one) so they can accurately tell readers where flow-over stories originated from. Oh, and if a splash is strong enough for the fake front page, it should lead the real front page too. Simples.

PS: And that Alan Jones story that was strong enough to splash the fake front page but couldn’t get a guernsey on the real front page on page 3? Now, we’re getting a headache! It was continued on page 10 – some hot story, right? – where the sub used “From Page 1” to signal where it flowed from. Which at least is right, even if the family’s cockie is shitting on it and the Fitz column at this very moment.

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